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The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer b
by jfengel 8mo ago
The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches.
When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.
- pjc50 8mo agoUnpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoThis is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes. My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.
- jfengel 8mo agoI don't think it can be figured out. Every democratic country has political parties.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoTrue but I think much could be done to blunt their impact if we collectively put our minds to it.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoPeople really love to create associations, and if "parties" are banned, "movements" or "clubs" that are "totally-not-parties" will take their place. We are too gregarious to prevent emergence of political groups. A parliament of cats would probably be more individualistic, but not that of humans.
- rgblambda 8mo agoVoting system reform would probably mitigate the worst aspects of political parties. Egypt after ousting Mubarak held an election where a third of seats were reserved for independents. Most winning candidates were just Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. I suspect the military interim government did that deliberately to justify their later coup.
- perilunar 8mo agoYou don't need to outlaw parties, just remove any privileges and powers they have.
- jfengel 8mo agoDeadlock would be fine if the other two branches weren't running amuck.
- pjc50 8mo agoNot a problem in the UK system, although the PM has a lot of power he is very much removable if the party doesn't support it.
- hunterpayne 8mo agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but aren't members of the current PM's party publicly saying he needs to step down right now?
- pjc50 8mo agoYes. They can say what they like, but until they can find 167 votes from Labour MPs to remove him, he stays. https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons This is where the intra-party coalitions become important. Every party of significant size has them. Labour is effectively a coalition between a rightwing faction (New Labour/Blue Labour) and everyone else who is more leftwing. The internal and external debate is the question: should they focus "right" (immigrant and queerbashing, welfare cuts) to appease the right wing of the party and try to pick up Reform/Conservative voters, or focus "left" on their base and people who are switching to Green?
- dralley 8mo agoOn the other hand, voting needs to mean something. If voting doesn't mean anything, because the whole system is held in a vice grip by a sclerotic institution playing power games with itself, then the broader system eventually collapses. My personal opinion is that Mitch McConnell's intransigence and unwillingness to do anything lest Obama get credit for it led directly to an increased desire for a "strongman"